The Wednesday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

GOG has a new Deal of the Day and a new sale:

• The new DotD is Being a DIK - Season 2, be aware that it's a NSFW game, 18% off during 46 hours: https://www.gog.com/en/game/being_a_dik_season_2
• And there's a new Midweek Sale, with up to 90% discounts during 5 days: https://www.gog.com/en/promo/20230705_midweek_sale

The Humble Store has two new sales:

• The Daedalic Summer Sale features up to 90% discounts during 4 days. There are keys for Steam and GOG: https://humblebundle.com/store/promo/daedalic-summer-sale/
• And the Yakuza Chronicles Sale puts the games and DLCs of the series up to 75% off during 13 days. All the keys are for Steam: https://humblebundle.com/store/promo/yakuza-chronicles-sale/

Fanatical has a couple of deals:

• The new Star Deal is Far Cry® 6 Game of the Year Edition, 74% off during 48 hours. The key is for UbiConnect: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/far-cry-6-game-of-the-year-edition
• And there's a new contest to win some Cyberpunk Goodies. Learn more here: https://www.fanatical.com/en/blog/cyberpunk-contest-and-bundles

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

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MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

Quake 4 Hi Def V3.1 released, improving textures and 3D models
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/quake-4-hi-def-v3-1-released-improving-textures-and-3d-models/
Quake 4 fans, here is something for you today. Modder ‘y2keeth’ has released Version 3.1 of his Hi-Def Mod for Quake 4. This is a must-have mod for everyone that wants to replay this id Tech 4-powered Quake game, and we highly recommend downloading it.
For those unaware, Quake 4 Hi-Def attempts to overhaul the game’s graphics by improving its textures and 3D models. Moreover, V3.1 adds full shadow map files.
>> There are some screenshots and an almost 5 minutes video.

Fallout New Vegas Remake in Fallout 4 gets new gameplay video
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/fallout-new-vegas-remake-in-fallout-4-gets-new-gameplay-video/
The modding team behind the remake of Fallout: New Vegas in Fallout 4 has released a brand new gameplay video. This video focuses on the New Vegas weapons that will return to the game. These weapons are the Recharger Rifle, Recharger Pistol, and MF Hyperbreeder Alpha.
>> The article has a less than 2 minutes video.

Add a tumbleweed companion who encourages violence in Fallout: New Vegas with this mod
https://www.pcgamer.com/add-a-tumbleweed-companion-who-encourages-you-to-violence-to-fallout-new-vegas-with-this-mod/
A wonderful new mod for Fallout: New Vegas adds a jolly psychic tumbleweed to the game as a critter companion for your party. Windy the Wind Brahmin is a psychic tumbleweed that you can purchase from some mutants at Brooks Tumbleweed Ranch if you have the Wild Wasteland trait—you know, the one that adds silly jokes and weird stuff to the game.
"You can compliment her, pet her, and when she's in your party she'll shoot a freakin' sweet psionic mind control beam which has a chance to make enemies' heads explode upon death. She also has a dozen or so lines of dialogue tied to the main quest," says creator DuncanWasHere, "Also, she flies. Gone are the days of broken tumbleweed companion mods that are more annoying intrusive than novel."
>> There are no screenshots nor videos about the mod.

This Red Dead Redemption 2 Mod greatly enhances its gameplay
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/this-red-dead-redemption-2-mod-greatly-enhances-its-gameplay/
Modder ‘LittleCumdumpster’ has released a new mod for Red Dead Redemption 2 that aims to greatly enhance its gameplay.
According to its description, this mod allows the player to use NPC-exclusive scenarios. As such, you can now play the piano, lean on fences, railings and walls, or sit on chairs. You can also sleep on beds, on the ground and on bedrolls, and you can use buckets filled with water to wash yourself.
What’s also cool here is that this gameplay mod allows you to switch scenarios on the fly. For instance, if you’re sitting on a chair or a bench, you can press the key and a list of available scenarios will pop up. Then, once you press one of the prompts, your character will start the next custom scenario.
>> There are no screenshots nor video of this mod.

Red Dead Redemption 2 legal jobs mod finally gives Arthur Morgan the quiet life he deserves
https://www.pcgamer.com/red-dead-redemption-2-legal-jobs-mod-finally-gives-arthur-morgan-the-quiet-life-he-deserves/
Red Dead Redemption 2 flows like amber: thick and slow-paced. In fact, its brief moments of madness—those enormous shootouts with cops and bandits—only really get in the way of your real business of ambling slowly around on horseback in the midday sun. Well, no longer. A mod from creators Bolmin and Shtivi (via Rock Paper Shotgun) will finally let Arthur Morgan hang up his six-shooters and fulfil his true destiny: Becoming a Taskrabbit guy in 1899.
Jobs – Expanded and Enhanced is the mod in question, and it's actually a remake of an earlier project made by Bolmin themself. It adds job boards to "every major town" in RDR2, giving you the opportunity to take on any of six new avenues of legal work.

Hollow Knight's newest mod feels like it should be paid DLC
https://www.pcgamer.com/hollow-knights-newest-mod-feels-like-it-should-be-paid-dlc/
It's been a while since I played Hollow Knight, an awesome 2017 metroidvania from the minds at Team Cherry. It's filled with bugs (in a good way), mysterious halls, overgrown gardens, and gorgeous artwork that somehow makes Hallownest's desolate wastes feel cosy and inviting. I was delighted to discover—with the help of Gamesradar—that the fanmade expansion the Pale Court was finally released at the start of the month.
This mod allows you to do battle with the five knights of Hallownest by using the Dream Nail at specific locations, which is an item you won't be getting until later in the game. That means you'll probably need to sink your mandibles into a full playthrough to experience it yourself, or hope your old save's still kicking about in the cloud.
I recommend going into the Pale Court well-equipped, though, because I brushed off my old save file from 2018 to give it a try, and its bosses are definitely endgame. After stumbling my way through the Royal Waterways, 'Kindly Isma' beat me up and took my lunch geo a dozen times before I threw in the towel.

GAMING NEWS

The Division 2 Title Update 18.2 released and here are all its fixes, tweaks and improvements
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/the-division-2-title-update-18-2-released-and-here-are-all-its-fixes-tweaks-and-improvements/
Ubisoft has released Title Update 18.2 for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, and shared its complete changelog. According to the patch notes, this new update adds support for the Escalation Apparel Event, fixes a number of issues, and packs some tweaks and improvements.
>> More about The Division 2 in the second post.

Take a look at the E3 2001 Behind Closed Doors Demo of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/take-a-look-at-the-e3-2001-behind-closed-doors-demo-of-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic/
YouTube’s ‘Noclip Game History Archive’ has shared a video from the E3 2001 Behind Closed Doors Demo of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
This is a really cool video, though most modern-day gamers won’t find it particularly interesting. After all, we’re talking about an E3 2001 video. On the other hand, now that E3 is dead, this is a must-watch video (at least for nostalgia/history purposes).

The Crew 2 Season 9 Episode 1: American Legends is 32GB on PC, full patch notes
https://www.dsogaming.com/patches/the-crew-2-season-9-episode-1-american-legends-is-32gb-on-pc-full-patch-notes/
Ubisoft has just released the Season 9 Episode 1: American Legends Patch for The Crew 2. This update is 32GB in size on PC, and you can find below its full patch notes.

Starbreeze reveals new beta gameplay footage for PAYDAY 3
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/starbreeze-reveals-new-beta-gameplay-footage-for-payday-3/
Deep Silver and Starbreeze have shared a new developer diary for PAYDAY 3 which features some new gameplay footage from its closed beta phase.
In this developer diary, Starbreeze focuses on the game’s weapons and combat mechanics. Therefore, if you’re interested in it, we highly recommend watching it.

The Wednesday news, part two:

If Friday the 13th must die, it's going out with all players on a high
https://www.pcgamer.com/if-friday-the-13th-must-die-its-going-out-with-all-players-on-a-high/
Early June brought the sad news that the excellent Friday the 13th: The Game would be removed from sale at the end of the year and eventually become unplayable, due to the expiry of its license for the horror property. Despite its quality the game is now relatively old, and it unfortunately existed alongside the similar and hugely popular Dead by Daylight, but it had retained a solid player count: which is probably why publisher Gun Media has committed to keeping the servers online until the end of 2024.
Gun Media's now announced that, as of tomorrow, Friday the 13th: The Game is going to boost all players to max level, give them all available Legendary Perks, unlock all the kill animations (barring DLC) and strip out all the XP nonsense. It's even removing any negative effects from perks and giving them the best roll possible, so basically giving everyone everything in its best possible form outside of the paid-for DLC Jason kills (which like the base game remain available with a hefty discount, though I wouldn't be too surprised if they end up giving those away at a later date too).

Katamari creator returns with a game starring a character stuck in a T-pose
https://www.pcgamer.com/katamari-creator-returns-with-a-game-starring-a-character-stuck-in-a-t-pose/
It's been a bumper year for fans of Keita Takahashi, with the remastered release of the best Katamari game on Steam, a Google tribute to the King of All Cosmos' glory, and now the announcement of the offbeat creator's next game, to a T. Developed by the Takahashi-led uvula studio and to be published by Annapurna Interactive, it's a 3D "narrative adventure game" where you play as a teenager called Teen "with a unique posture." Teen is stuck in a T-pose, the 'default' state for in-game character models, and one which sometimes crops up when games glitch out (T-posed NPCs was one of the most prominent early bugs in Cyberpunk 2077).

Apple and Epic are headed to the Supreme Court
https://www.pcgamer.com/apple-and-epic-are-headed-to-the-supreme-court/
The long-running legal beef between Apple and Epic Games is headed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Apple has filed a notice requesting a stay of a lower court injunction against it while it prepares to appeal a 2021 ruling on "anti-steering" practices that ordered the company to allow developers on the App Store to use non-Apple payment options.

Ubisoft hits Division 2 cheaters with 2-week bans and warns of worse to come if they don't knock it off
https://www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-hits-division-2-cheaters-with-2-week-bans-and-warns-of-worse-to-come-if-they-dont-knock-it-off/
Ubisoft says Division 2 players who are "exploiting a bug" in the Descent game mode to gain "unfair amounts of XP" will be hit with two-week bans for their efforts, and could end up permanently banned if they persist in taking advantage of it.
>> Ubi could also try to fix the bug, just saying.

Indie devs made a haunted chain of free games that feed into each other—a videogame exquisite corpse
https://www.pcgamer.com/indie-devs-made-a-haunted-chain-of-free-games-that-feed-into-each-othera-videogame-exquisite-corpse/
In the early 20th Century, bored Surrealists created a parlor game where one would draw part of a figure, fold paper so only a bit is shown, then pass it to the next person to continue. In this way a weird, multipart monster would be created in a game now called Exquisite Corpse. Now a collective of indie devs working (mostly) in the lo-fi PSX aesthetic have created a chain of free games based on a collective story—with a twist. Each game in C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D. (Chainged) ends with a choice, and that choice feeds into a separate game, creating a branching series of games with their own endings. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this: In true exquisite corpse fashion, developers only knew about games before them in their own branch.

World-leaping adventure Cocoon will come out this September
https://www.pcgamer.com/world-leaping-adventure-cocoon-will-come-out-this-september/
The new game from the studio of Limbo and Inside gameplay designer Jeppe Carlsen, Cocoon, has a release date: September 29th, 2023. The adventure game where you can carry a world on your back was first revealed last year, though at the time the trailer was deliberately mysterious.

Fallout creator reveals why he quit development on 'WoW-killer' Wildstar after internecine company in-fighting
https://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-creator-reveals-why-he-quit-development-on-wow-killer-wildstar-after-internecine-company-in-fighting/
Timothy Cain just gave us a porthole view into the development of Wildstar, one of only two games that he quit development on. The video is a 20 minute journey through bizarre office politics, stubborn co-workers, and a meeting where Cain arrived with over four hours of notes to try and set the record straight.

Intel Arrow Lake CPUs Rumored To Drop 20A Node, Utilizing TSMC 3nm Instead

https://wccftech.com/intel-arrow-lake-cpus-rumored-to-drop-20a-node-utilizing-tsmc-3nm-instead/

Their fabs are so junk it's not even funny if this is true. Like Jensen can say Intels next gen nods look great all he wants but until Jensen puts his GPUs on there, it's pointless. And if Intel ends up putting their own CPUs on their competitors fabs, all that R&D being sunk into their fabs has been a waste of resources.

NVIDIA already using modified power connector on GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-already-using-modified-power-connector-on-geforce-rtx-4070-founders-edition

Spot the difference...

I guess the sense pins are smaller

AMD Ryzen 7 5700 8 Core & Ryzen 3 5100 4 Core Budget CPUs For AM4 Platform Confirmed

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-5700-8-core-ryzen-3-5100-4-core-budget-cpus-for-am4-confirmed/

Huh well longest supported socket in history lol

Yeah this is why I don't bother with loot based PVP games. There are some many griefers and trolls who play for fun at the expense of others. Generally find hop in and hop out games are fine but when it comes to loot based ones, yeah.

Cool that you had some fun though with your friend online with Sea of Thieves. It does look like a fun game to play with a mate or two.

Well, Intel's Fabs failing to meet their goals isn't that surprising anymore. It's still disappointing, but nothing strange or unexpected.

As for the new GPU connector being very similar to the not-so-new one, well, they couldn't really redo it from scratch, right? There are already too many products out there between GPUs and PSUs to make drastic changes.

And well, it's the little things that matter, right? As long as the changes fix the problem, no one will care if they're big or small.

By the way, this article didn't fit into the regular news, but it's so crazy and WTF-worthy that I still think it's worth sharing:

Wunderkind builds 'fully compliant RISC-V computer' entirely inside Terraria, then plays Pong on it
https://www.pcgamer.com/wunderkind-builds-fully-compliant-risc-v-computer-entirely-inside-terraria-then-plays-pong-on-it/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXPiqk0-zDY
A dedicated and possibly magical Terraria player over at the From Scratch YouTube channel has done something that, most likely, I won't fully understand for as long as I live. With only the aid of a mod called WireHead—which "maintains full compatibility with [Terraria's] vanilla wiring system but reimplements it in a much more efficient manner"—Xander Naumenko managed to build a "fully compliant RISC-V computer" inside the 2D game. It even has specs:

• Clock speed: ~5kHz
• Ram: 96kb
• Instruction set: rv32i

Probably not one to run Starfield on. Naumenko spends the video above detailing his five-month, 600-hour journey to create the in-game computer and the "Pong clone" he got running on it. It somehow manages to sound both strangely simple and devilishly complex.

That one seems much more complex than the 8-bit CPUs from Minecraft.

That being said, developing a simple microprocessor from scratch is the sort of stuff people learn to do in computer science college. It seems insane from the outside but apparently, it's commonplace enough.

Thanks for the write-up on Sea of Thieves! I've been meaning to get it at some point, and I was wonderig how the experience is with just two players. Sounds like it's not necessarily great, depending on your luck.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358660/Life_by_You/

Flashbacks to all his memory's of Quake and UT O-o.